


Earth's Memories

by Wolff_Night



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:55:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28324179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolff_Night/pseuds/Wolff_Night
Summary: My secret Santa gift for xSunFlower!
Relationships: Elsa/Hans (Disney)
Kudos: 8





	Earth's Memories

**Author's Note:**

> My secret Santa gift for xSunFlower!

The light sheathes in through the window, and the white block of sun on his face rips a groan from his throat. He carries the bricks of sleep in his eyelids before crushing them away and sitting up, the damp crackles of water that rise through the cobbly floor sticking to his back.

Sigh. He clutches the blanket they so generously shimmied through the bars, the seams prickling his palms. 

It is his first day of waking up in the dungeon. 

He blinks away the last dusts of slumber, yawns, and cranes his neck to look outside. The bars slashed across the glass make him squint, but he breathes in and observes. 

The fjord is back to a glossy, ever moving blue, traveling down Arendelle's back and sliding off into the distance. 

The houses dotting the teeny town he has to lean in to recognize have bright red roofs with specks of what he takes to be fruit-a celebratory custom, most likely. 

He snorts, and his eyes slide upward. 

The mountains march in confident green chains across the continent, the grass lazily flicking the warm breeze through the air. Or, he assumes it's warm. 

With the yellow filter hanging over the earth and the scorching sun hugging the sky, he imagines the soothing air on his skin, then shakes the thought away with a rumble in his head and the clamminess of the water on his back. 

He sucks in another breath, heaves the blanket to the side, and clings onto what he knows to be true: it is July the twenty second, Queen Elsa is back on the throne, and he is in captivity. 

He lets the thought gut his brain before he peeks out through the window again. And, he adds to the list, summer, warm summer, has returned to Arendelle.

With that, doesn't dare gaze any longer; his mind has already been filled with too many pleasant images of a world he has intruded upon for too long. 

He instead pulls up the image of the blade he once held over her head, now a cold spirit in his hands. He rubs them together, the faint pink scars making for bumpy skin and a shudder. Even as he heaves a breath into them, they still tremble. 

His eyes drop. 

Inside the dungeon, swirling with the frigid hopelessness of damned souls, he is cold. Cold, inside and out.

As if to taunt him, the shrill laughter of children drifts toward him, muffled against the glass. 

He goes to glance out the window again, then stops and yanks the blanket over his head. He curls up against the floor, letting the water seep through his clothing and immersing himself in a chilling darkness.

In the cage that was made for him, he balances blades on his skin and cuts out the sun, breathing in black, cobbly bitterness. 

Give me a break. 

-

The next month hobbles onward in a similar, aching fashion. The only thing that breaks it out of its gray monotony comes twice a day, six hours apart. 

BANG, BANG! 

"Come get it!" yells the guard each time. Then he leaves and the exchange is over. 

His limbs are heavy when he knocks the blanket off of his torso, and he sludges toward his temporary reprieve. 

Really, Your Majesty? is all he can think of at such a time.

The muck slapped onto a plate is a grayish color, and if he were any younger he would have turned his nose up and refused to eat anything that resembled brains. 

His hands clutch the sides of the plate-thank God it isn't cracked-but he can do nothing except waft a "Thank you!" through the door despite his isolation, drizzled in sugar and crawling with all manners of falsities. At least he cannot be seen when he slinks back into the shadows, setting it down with a soft thud, and forcing down whatever poisonous glop they have decided to execute him with. 

It is chalky against his tongue, but he eats. Yams, he guesses. 

He swallows, figures it's not all bad, and jams his fork in again. 

As he does, he pictures her pink lips pressed up against the bars blowing snowy plumes at him, her laughter prickly shards of ice against his spine; he shivers. 

Damn wench, he thinks, and shovels down another bite. 

-

By the time the leaves molt, an assembly of tally marks lines up across the wall. He has taken to counting them multiple times a day to stave off the gnawing teeth against his stomach and the crackling deterioration of his bones-seventy in total, today. 

Despite the slippery red blood slicking down his fingers and the puff of a furious beard across his hollow face, he doesn't yet bow to the white apiration of humility. 

Though, he also doesn't stop her from slinking through the bars either, freezing his nerves and keeping him pressed against the walls. 

He feels the ghost of her fingertips against his spine and trembles, letting his lips part.

She knows what he wants, and in such a way she punishes him, tiptoeing on the peripheral of his desires brought on by slimy fantasies of kneeling masses that kiss his feet and arms until he throws his head back and screams. 

But the hymns that trickle off their tongues eventually turn to weightless vapor in his ears and the red blots of their affection on his skin and the dull throb in his fingertips are the only reminders they were ever there.

Ghosts are all he talks to now, the walking clumps of spotty memories of a time he thinks he was happy, or to the far flung future that haunts him with its vividness. 

The guard could pass for company, he once thought, if the empty clang of the lonely dish could pass for conversation. In the end, all of his attempts to speak with him were cut off as soon as they started with a snappy warning and the clang of a spear ringing against his ears. 

As it turns out, she has made it so the only person he can reliably turn to is her. Whether she trickles in through the gap in his heart and sternum or between his brain and skull, or she simply lives within the silent pulse of his heart, he does not know. 

Maybe she had it planned in such a way; Anna never stays in his thoughts for longer than a moment, and he only remembers her when he misses the orange flames of fire against his skin. 

And so, Elsa is his only company in this pitiful gray cell, and he needs her. 

She knows this, and he knows that she knows. Perhaps because long ago he realized that she is him, and when he feels his veins freeze, that is himself, letting his little daydream of the queen play out. 

Daydream, he calls her. But she knows better.

Whenever he wears a crown atop his head, she is seated beside his silver throne, glistening with blue diamonds and in a frilly dress that swallows the ground wherever she goes. Her hair is braided on her left, trails of every manner of jewels the earth can mold twinkling like a constellation in her light blonde locks, guiding him home.

She smells of pine and a hint of citrus, lemon, that tickles his nose and her eyes flicker toward him once, twice, thrice. For she feels the tug of the red string that binds them, too.

Even if he had to tie it himself. 

The rippling tide of citizens throwing their hands into the air and singing his name, rumbling the ground, cannot rattle his skin more than her hot breath drifting toward his ear.

He watches the sea of cloth shift and churn and a smile overtakes his face as she turns to him, and he turns to her. 

In that moment he wishes that the cloth moving was not from the body of his people, but from his wife, and he can only imagine the glow of the moon upon the spill of her hair, outlining the angular shape of her body. He lets his soul be filled with the enchanting song of her moans drifting through the air, crying for him, him. 

Hans, Hans. 

She hears the ring of his desires and her eyes shimmer, her thin pink lips curling up. 

She giggles, her shoulders drawing close to each other, and when her gloveless hand reaches toward him, cutting through the cries and hollers for His Majesty, it is only slightly cold and her skin is smooth to the touch. It sends warm sparks shooting up his arm and he clasps her fingers, docile and willing, in his. 

But there is a catch. 

As soon as he dares to lean toward her, the temple and the hearth of her body are gone and an icy guillotine slashes through the last semblance of comfort he can conjure. 

Then the roar of his stomach rips him back into his cell, and the only cry he can hear is from the cobblestone, dripping its steady sorrow into the earth. 

The phantom of what is never to be lingers in his stomach, filling him with something much more primal than hunger. 

-

He tumbles into sleep one night, the edges of his vision yellow and purple as he goes. 

When he steadies himself, breathes in, sea salt laps against his nostrils and the steady tide lures him forward; his knees are full and don't creak against his bones as he heeds its call, returns to where he has always been drawn. 

The giggle of the waves draw his eyes, and he stops. 

There she stands, facing the pier, the water reaching toward her. Her hair is unrestrained, tossed against the wind like a holy banner, and the hint of white light through the dark clouds cups the dip of her back, clad in ice. 

Wrench? No. Queen? No.

He pauses. 

"...Elsa." 

She whips around to face him, and her eyes are wide, her lips open. The glistening of her skin and the fullness of her face have him doing a double take; this is Elsa, but not his Else. 

His heart hammers in his ears, saliva drums down his throat, and he steps back. 

She steps forward. 

Clack, clack. 

She brings the entire world with her in her step, whispering prayers from the religions he has always rejected, singing along with the brooks he has long since tuned out, sighing like the leaves in every forest he shut himself away from.

But more than that, more than the light that parts behind her and blinds him and forces tears from his dry eyes, she carries song. 

When she reaches to cup his face, her hand an explosion of tingles across his cheek, his chest is ripped open, and she spills into him. 

Her eyes are deep, forcing him to look, and he realizes. 

The trees bend in respect around her, and the waves ride along her back. 

The earth which hugs her so easily has him reeling, and he sees her, really sees her, for the first time. 

She is more than a wrench, a queen, Elsa. 

She is hope incarnate. 

She wipes a finger across his face, parting his tears, and he crashes to his knees, bows along with the land. His heart is pounding against his ribcage, so tight and small. 

The song of forgotten folklore and the wonder of story best accompanied under a canvas of stars rush back to him, fill his soul with memories long forgotten. 

Fire ripples across his veins in a glimmer of the passion he once used to carry; she is showing him again, who he used to be.

'Hans.'

He bites back a sob and trembles like a scared child.

'What do you say when you hurt someone?' his mother's voice whispered. 

His eyes burst with heavy tears, mixing falling across his tongue and slamming into the dirt. 

"I'm sorry," waterfalls out of his mouth. A heavy stone travels up his throat and he heaves it up, spews out the last of his damned pride. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." 

Even when she places a hand on his head, cards through his hair like a mother to her child, he does not stop. 

She doesn't make him. 

She listens to the storm inside of his soul, stands in the middle of the eye and sees him. Every inch. Even as the earth collapses around him, and the clouds screech along with him and rain daggers into the ground, she listens. 

Even when his tears force his voice to crack and rub raw in the cave of his throat and he babbles until the apologies are unidentifiable, she stays. All this time, she has stayed. 

And he realizes something else. 

He wants her to. 

She cups his hands in hers; they are cold, yes, but they are hers. 

She lays a single kiss upon his knuckle, her lips soothing the jagged scar along its ridge. 

They lock eyes. Hers are steady, blue. His are blurry, green. 

But they meet each other perfectly like the land to the sea.

He screws his eyelids together as the ground rocks around him, the edges of the darkness blending into a bright white and blue. 

He clenches her hands in his, grits his teeth so loudly his skull rattles. 

But he knows, and she knows that he knows. She must leave. Like winter welcoming the spring, he knows she has grown into something beyond him and he cannot hope to follow. 

Still, when the dream fades and the light sifts in through the cross in the window, it doesn't stop the tears that makes him feel as though his eyes have been split open, or that his heart has leaked into the ground. 

He tugs the blanket to his face and trembles against it, letting every little seam bite into him. 

"I'm sorry," he sobs, "I'm sorry." 

The water carries his voice, guttural like a newborn's, into its banks and carries it along.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." 

The leaves that have just begun to spring out of the trees echo his words.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." 

-

"Elsa?" Anna calls from up the trail. "Are you alright?" 

She stops, stares into the wood. The soil pillows her feet and she digs her toenails in, listens. 

The leaves, green and newly awoken are crying.

'Sorry. I'm sorry.' 

She listens some more. Then, she thinks of him. Whether he has always occupied her heart or he has filled the space between her brain and skull she does not know, but he is with her. 

Slowly, she mouths it to the wind, making every syllable just right. 

'I forgive you.' 

She sends it across the pulse of the earth, along the stream of its memory. Then she turns back, glances once more, and breathes in.

"I'm coming!" 

She hopes he listens.


End file.
